Oxfam America Blog

Villagers work on repairing a broken well, known as a bore hole, in the Mudzi district of Zimbabwe.

I have just returned from Zimbabwe where a cholera outbreak has now sickened more than 80,000 people and killed more than 3,700 of them. Clean water and public health education are critical in fighting the spread of this disease. Oxfam and its local partner, Single Parents Widow(er)s Support Network, are providing both of those things. Below are a couple of audio blogs that capture some of that work.

In the first blog, public health educators are singing a song–one of several they use–to two large gatherings of villagers. The song is in Shona and it’s advising people who use the bush as a bathroom to properly cover their feces afterwards. The second audio blog tells the story of Ronald Marozva, an engineer who travels around rural Mudzi repairing the broken wells so many people depend on.

Cholera Song

Mudzi Water

When you read about the rate of infection of HIV in South Africa, the numbers are hard to comprehend. It is the country with the most people in the world living with HIV and AIDS: nearly 5.5 million of the country’s total population of 48 million. In some parts of the country one in five is infected. Read the rest of this entry »